Stupid Courage
by socks-lost
Summary: A post 1x10 fic in Maura's POV. Strong T.


**A/N: **I don't know why I find it so difficult to write in season three time frame but I do. Sorry(?)

**Disclaimer: **Don't own. No money. ETC.

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"_You are deceptively complex I do not understand you."  
"Well, you would if I was a dead body."_

Those words were thrown around as a joke with no real meaning. Detective Jane Rizzoli was never supposed to end up on Dr. Maura Isles' table next to Bobby Marino. She wasn't supposed to shoot herself in the abdomen when the second wave of EMT's were hardly on their way. She wasn't supposed to hit the ground barely breathing, barely alive. She wasn't supposed to, but she grabbed the gun and pointed it at her stomach and she fell to the ground barely breathing, barely alive.

…

Day One

The waiting room was quiet, not silent but quiet. There were others mumbling and talking down the hall, the sound of the air conditioner whirring overhead, the sound of doctors and nurses chatting as they went about their day – it wasn't silent. Such a large space full of so many people, so many _alive _people there could never be silence in its truest of form.

But their group – the huddled group of officers of all ranks and divisions, of family members both by red blood and blue – was silent. Maura had never understood that phrase before, never fully quite caught the concept of the bond that officers of the law shared. Her only experience had been with the homicide unit. She knew of course how they worked, knew how close knit they were, how they had an irrevocable need to protect their own. But she had no idea how deep that protection was, no idea of the power of such a sentence. Until then.

Officers – some she had met before, many she hadn't, detectives from the drug unit, from vice, patrol, uniformed officers that kept watch over the perimeter while she surveyed a crime scene – were there, it was standing room only. Because it wasn't just Jane. It wasn't just Frankie. Although in her world it felt like it, but it wasn't. No. Other officers were killed, other men and women who wore the badge, carried the gun - dead. People whose only crime was getting up, getting dressed, and going into work - dead. Good people died.

Maura looked around the room. These people took an oath. And they were betrayed by one of their own. It was a twisted, twisted mess. A dirty cop killed cops so he wouldn't be caught being dirty? It didn't make sense. But then again where was logic in death? That was where she always struggled with her job. It was why she was the medical examiner and not the detective. Her job was to tell how a person was killed, how they died, maybe, _maybe _she'd venture into how the person lived but it was always shrouded in death. In the way that how a person lived could've been the caused their death.

Death, death, death. It was everywhere. Mourning wives and husbands, mourning sons and daughters, mourning friends, mourning people. People had died. They had died at the hand of one of their own.

Why was that such a concept? Why was she having so much difficulty with that?

It reminded her of a case from years before. A mother of two young children one day just made the decision to kill her children (one by asphyxiation, one by drowning) to then take her own life with a kitchen knife. The woman was mentally unsound, but still Maura had trouble understanding. It was unfair. It didn't make sense. How did a person do something so tragic? So unfair to their own? To the people that loved them and had their back?

That's what Jane would go on and on about, having someone's back. It was the highest praise one could give a fellow officer. It was a way, Maura had inferred after years of watching this exchange, for them to say 'I care. We can do this. We're okay.' And to have this…this perversion, this act of unjust, unrighteousness, unlawful act thrown into that, shattering every piece of it into tiny, tiny unfixable units was wrong. It was wrong. She wasn't even a part of the 'blue line' and it hit her in the bottom of her stomach just how wrong it was.

This day – the day Boston Police Headquarters was taken hostage, taken siege, taken under fire – would remain etched in literal stone on the lives it wrecked.

Hours went by. Officers went home, officers came by. She jumped every single time a loud noise cracked through the area. The adrenaline started to wear off hours ago and now it seemed to all be hitting her. Maura shifted in her chair. Her eyes made the dangerous path to her fingers. She could've sworn her heart had a slight palpitation at the sight.

She had washed her hands hastily after climbing out of the ambulance. But it wasn't enough. She couldn't tear her eyes away from them. She swallowed. There was blood – _not _a reddish brown substance, but blood, pure blood – caked lightly around her nails. When she blinked she could feel the warmth of Jane's life – Jane's blood – as it flowed from two gaping wounds, two holes, on her sides. When she blinked she could hear Jane gasping for air as a whimper passed through her. It was that noise that would surely give her nightmares, not the sound of bullets or the image of her best friend falling to the earth unmoving. No, it would be the whimper and the fluttering eyelids that would ruin her.

…

Day two

Maura sat at Jane's bedside. She hadn't showered, hadn't brushed her hair or eaten. The only reason she had changed was because a nurse had given her a pair of scrubs. She had no idea being friends with Jane could've possibly been this heard, no idea that putting herself in a position of living her life of finding people that cared about her could ever be this hard. But it was the hardest thing she'd ever done in her entire life. She'd been through medical school at one of the toughest universities in the country. She'd been through her hospital rotation afterwards. She'd taught college courses. But this, this watching a…a loved one (Jane felt like a loved one, anyway) fight for their life in a way that made strength almost not matter, in a way that made her want to believe in god just so she could ask him to help Jane through this, this was the hardest thing.

In movies and books, the hero always wins. Good guys faced the evil and came out the victor, toppling all odds. The hero always came crashing in at the last possible second, miracles took place, and lives were saved. It's how legends were formed, how heroes became heroes. It's tried and true tested knowledge. It's how it was, how it was always supposed to be.

Only that's not real life, not real time, or real world. It's fiction. It's lies. It makes a good story and sure if the hero came out in the end okay it would make a great tale of triumph over evil, the good guys would win. But the reality of it was that triumph comes with a cost. The reality was that the hero was someone who was full of stupid courage – the kind of courage that makes them think they're invincible, the kind that makes them think dying was okay, the kind that whispered _for the greater good _as they did something daring and dangerous. It's when this person did something against the odds, something stupid and courageous without realizing that their actions had ramifications. Because ramifications existed, everything had a price.

Like when someone full of stupid courage puts a gun to their side and pulled the trigger. An act in itself that would be considered a type of suicide in any other situation but in that one it was _brave and heroic. _

Her father was a history professor and even though her heart was in science she had learned about tragedies and love stories and courage and triumph. She'd learned about great defeats, great battles, great victories of wars fought by brave men. And it amazed her, always, how people of all walks of life were so willing, so ready, to fall upon the proverbial sword of death for their cause. What made one do it? How did they get ahead of the barrier of self-preservation and make the ultimate sacrifice? Did they think so highly of themselves, were they so arrogant in their abilities that they thought they could cheat death one more time? When the stakes were the highest? Each question brought her to one final thought.

What made Jane do it? _How _could Jane do it? (She was there. The woman full of stupid courage did it in front of her. How could she just…how could she?)

Hazel eyes darted towards the still form on the hospital bed in front of her. It was the stillest she'd ever seen Jane in their remarkably short time of knowing one another. Maura thought back over the last year and a half. Jane had taught her so much. She a woman with a doctorate, an M.D. She who had been to some of the finest educational institutions the world had to offer, had been schooled by the lanky, headstrong detective from South Boston, in all of the things that mattered. Like life, and laughter, and love, and people, and stupid courage.

And now, now that person – her rock, her teacher, her savior – was hanging in limbo, dancing between life and the unthinkable 'D' word. A word in which she happily lived in most of her days, a word she couldn't even bring herself to _think _while she sat in that hospital chair, waiting.

…

Day Three

Frankie woke up. And she had been sent home. To rest and eat and shower and feed Bass (someone had taken him in the midst of the chaos and crime scene photos and he was safe at her home being taken care of by his caretaker) and relax. Only, she couldn't make it out of the parking lot. She just sat on a bench and let the warm summer air wash over her, blow her greasy hair out of her face. She couldn't leave. She was tethered there now, to that building. Everything she knew, everything she cared for, everything she _had _was lying in a bed hooked to a ventilator. She couldn't leave. She could never leave. Because what if Jane…when she was gone?

She sighed.

Frankie _was _awake though. He was groggy. He didn't remember much. The doctors said she had saved him. And then Angela gave her a hug. It was such a simple thing, such a motherly thing to do, and it completely overwhelmed her senses because the Isles' didn't hug. There were handshakes, powerful handshakes, there were shoulder grabs and kisses on the cheek, but no hugging. Only Angela was not an Isles. Angela was a Rizzoli and Rizzoli's hugged. Rizzoli's cared. And she was reminded that Frankie was only alive because of that. Because Jane had pushed her, and pushed her, to the point of breaking and doing something she thought she'd never do.

It was different working on Frankie than it was working on Natalie. Frankie was Jane's brother. And Jane was staring at her with big eyes full of hope and Maura had caved. And Frankie was alive for it. And then as the stakes got higher and more deadly in each case, working on Jane was different than working on any of them. But there wasn't much she could do for Jane besides but pressure on the wounds. Jane was still under a medical sedative. Jane was still in critical condition. Jane was still lying in a hospital bed. So she couldn't leave.

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Day Four

There was going to be a funeral the next day for one of the fallen detectives. Jane would hate herself for missing it and no one had even told Frankie, who was on a heavy dose of different medications that kept him nearly always unconscious.

One of her assistant medical examiners had come in the previous day and did all of the autopsies involving the siege. She hadn't even made the call, it was someone higher than her. It was probably the governor as he was the only one who had the rightful authority to do so.

There was still a steady stream of officers coming in and out of the building to get updates. Frost and Korsak had come in. The Rizzoli's had allowed them to visit Jane, saying they were just as much family to her as they were. (This was why Maura was also able to stay with Jane.)

The steady beep of Jane's heart was strangely comforting. Every so often she would dance a finger or two down Jane's wrist, down her thumb just to feel the slight heat radiating from her. It wasn't Jane's usual heat but it was heat nonetheless and heat meant alive.

Maura overheard Frank and Angela yelling at each other. It was more of a hiss actually, a heated argument in whisper-yells. Maura swallowed her coffee. She had gone home early that morning, for less than an hour. She showered, changed, fed Bass, and packed a small bag that was stowed securely in the trunk of her car so she wouldn't have to do that again.

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Day Five

Frank left. He had to take care of a plumbing job, an emergency. Frankie was awake and Jane was still…It took Maura a moment to understand that life was happening, that every day she sat inside the walls of the hospital waiting on her best friend to come back to her was a day that other people were doing normal things, that life hadn't stopped or been put on pause. People went to the grocery store. They took their children to the park. They laughed and loved and lived.

They took Jane off of the sedative, which meant it was up to Jane when to wake up.

Maura had stolen a glance at Jane's chart. Jane was lucky in the fact that the bullet didn't do as much damage to her organs as it could have. She was unlucky in the fact that she shot herself when the ambulance was still three minutes out, which meant she had lost a fairly large amount of her blood supply. A blood loss so significant it caused her heart to stop beating in the ambulance.

Maura sighed and stretched her neck and back. She hadn't seen a yoga mat in weeks, since before the original case and all of this happened. The hospital chair that had become her little home wasn't entirely comfortable either.

…

Day Six

Maura wished she could take Jane's place. She honestly did. Because, really, no one would care if it was her lying in that bed. Maybe, Jane would visit every once in a while. But her parents would be out of the country and most likely too busy to visit. If it was her she would be the only one in the room. If it was her Jane's parents wouldn't be fighting. If it was her, it wouldn't be Jane.

Frankie was going home that day. He was getting officially discharged and going to be living with Angela and Frank until he was recovered.

…

Day Seven

She was tired, exhausted even. Hospitals had this way of sucking the energy from people. They had a way of breaking people. They were a place of healing but also a place of breaking. And that's the way she felt. If she had to stay in that little room any longer with no change she would break. Which was ridiculous as human being can't 'break.' They weren't toys or electrical gadgets. They broke a bone but got better, humans had the ability to regenerate, to heal. But she felt like glass in that hospital room. Glass on the edge of a table and with one fail swoop, one clumsy knock, she would fall and shatter.

She needed Jane to be okay. If she lost Jane she would lose everything. Before Jane she was Queen of the Dead living in a big empty house working through holidays. She would lose Frost and Korsak's friendship and movie nights and Jo Friday and soft brown eyes. Jane was the bridge that connected her to everything. And she had put all of her money into one basket, one pot, and now the stakes were imperceptibly high and she was a scientist, not a gambler. She needed Jane to be okay, so she could be okay.

Midway through that night just as the nurses were about to change shift, Jane had finally opened her eyes.

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**A/N: **I was thinking about writing a second chapter (but only a second chapter, a sort of "recovery" piece that goes into 2x01) but I'm more than happy with leaving it as a one-shot and ending it here. So what do you think?

Thanks for reading!


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